October 31/November 1

High School Transition & Parent/Guardian Brightspace account creation

It is hard to believe that 20% of the school year has gone by already and now in the busy season of Progress Reports and beginning conversations about high school. I must point out, again, that there is an important meeting tomorrow night, online, that I encourage you to check it out:

To access this, your Learner would have to log in to their Brightspace account to see this. It is posted in the CONTENT section in the High School binder under the tab that has the word "transition" in its title. As I have mentioned before, I suggest you set up a Brightspace account for yourself using the following link: https://sites.google.com/tdsb.on.ca/tdsbvle/families/brightspace-for-parents Once you visit that page, look for this section, which will walk you through how to set up an account. IF IT DOESN'T, please email me at my tdsb email. If you do not know this, please ask your learner for it.

Class assignment Tracking Chart 

I have updated the class assignment Tracking Chart to give the class a sense of what they have and have not completed.  It looks like this:

Xs indicate incomplete or assignments not handed in and a :) indicates that the assignment was handed in.

In most cases, I always allow a Student to hand in work, even if the due date has gone by.  I want to emphasize that they have a responsibility to complete and follow through with all of the assigned work, rather than ignoring it.  At this time, I have A LOT of marking to do and have not updated this chart, but will be doing that this week.  Please ask your Learner if they have been doing a good job at getting their assignment completed and if they haven't, ask them if they have come to the Teacher or another classmate for help.

Recent Math test & what to do if your mark was not as good as you wanted it to be

We had a Math test that brought together everything we have been learning since the start of the year with some new work on Scientific Notation.  There were a number of Students who scored above 70%.  Here are their names:

For the Students who did not do as well as they liked, I introduced them to an approach to improving their mark and understanding using something called a Rewwrite.

The example I posted explains the process.  If each question is done correctly, you can earn back 1/2 the value of the original mark.

There was already one of four people who did Rewrites to improve their mark.  Here is an example of their original mark and what happened, after a Rewrite was completed:

Deadlines for completing Rewrites for this test will be on Wednesday.  Students may use the original form to write out their mistakes and corrections, a blank piece of paper, or have a talk (conference) about their misunderstandings and newfound understanding.

In class, I provided time for Students to ask me questions about the test and posted -- in Brightspace -- a section on the test questions to assist them in understanding where they might have gone wrong.

Have a positive week.

Grade 8 to 9 Information Night for Parents

I am going to check to makes sure there is a link to this presentation. The image was taken from a PDF image and uncertain if the link to the ZOOM meeting works. One website that WILL provide some useful information on dates and transitions, can be found here: A useful video can be found here: Thanks, Mr. Proudfoot

It has been a while but things are in a Brighter space

Hello, family members of 8.2 students. I have not posted on the class Blog for a long time. Most of the posting I have been doing has been on the Brightspace platform. This is the learning platform we will be using, exclusively, if we should move to online learning.

The link to access Brightspace can be found on this link: Most of the online resources for our class have been posted there. Please ask the learner in your home to take a look at their Brightspace page. I do know, for you as caregivers (Parent/Parents/Guardians) that to get access to Brightspace, you have to have a TDSB email registered at Amesbury and then you will be able to get in and see the postings that are there. Should you have any questions, please email me at the TDSB email address that I sent out my introductory email and note home with. If you are not sure about that, ask your learner to have me write it in the agenda. From my perspective, I am enjoying the class and 8.2 very much. Are there challenges? Of course and that is part of the journey of being a Teacher and being a student. This is the final year before Grade 9 and there are still 8.5 months of intense, challenging and fun learning in front of us. I believe we can do this and there will always be help available, whenever the works becomes challenging. The Students have been away from a consistent period of school for quite a while now and I am hoping this year will be about addressing some of those gaps while still keeping the bar high, in terms of academic success. On a Social-Emotional level, we continue to build and develop our class community to be a happy, safe, and engaged space.